Final Exam Help

[neoblackheart]

So I am trying to finish the Final Exam. Alot of online posts says the best way to do the final exam is to make a straight line to one of the ships and start a boarding action. Well thats not that hard the problem is that even following 2 different videos the other ship just comes around behind me and starts poping shells into my rear end droping my crew faster than I can take out the enemy crew.

 

Is there some way new or did they change it or am I just really unlucky.

[admin]

The safe long route is the following (at least i passed it this way).

There are 2 ships (A and B )

• Use ALL chain on ship A to slow it down. If you time shots properly and shoot all sail groups you can really slow it down.
• Sail away kiting ship B (ship A will slow down and separate and won't be able to shoot you).
• Destroy ship B with cannonballs as fast as you can by hugging one of his sides (and stay on that sides to get his structure to zero)
• Kite if ship A gets to close sailing away again.
• After you destroyed ship b
• Come back to ship A and tank with your stronger broadside again hugging one of ship sides (staying on that side)
• Repair if needed in the process

 

Demising is also possible but might take more attempts as you might miss shots.

[Hullabaloo]

You can chain the shit out of one of them and sail off thus separating them. Brawl one down and then take its repairs and go back for the other. But that takes a lot longer and still requires some skill. The word 'Tutorial' is a bit misleading here, that final exam is hard and is supposed to signal that you have reached a certain level of expertise. I don't know how long you have been playing but I would probably have needed a few months of this game before I could have passed it.

[Anolytic]

The boarding route to the final exam is not very efficient, accounting for the fact that most players will have to restart the exam 10-20 times just to wait for an instance where the second Cerberus doesn't destroy you while boarding. 

I rather recommend hugging them both down one after another. By trying to always keep the one you are hugging between you and the second one, hence reducing in-coming damage, popping repairs early, and using rum to keep your crew above the enemy ships so you can hug them safely without risk of boarding by AI.

[neoblackheart]

Tried that its still really painfull. I really need to finish it I have a Pirate Frig Fully fitted out but I don't have the crew required for it yet.

 

[Eyesore]

28 minutes ago, admin said:

The safe long route is the following (at least i passed it this way).

There are 2 ships (A and B )

• Use ALL chain on ship A to slow it down. If you time shots properly and shoot all sail groups you can really slow it down.
• Sail away kiting ship B (ship A will slow down and separate and won't be able to shoot you).
• Destroy ship B with cannonballs as fast as you can by hugging one of his sides (and stay on that sides to get his structure to zero)
• Kite if ship A gets to close sailing away again.
• After you destroyed ship b
• Come back to ship A and tank with your stronger broadside again hugging one of ship sides (staying on that side)
• Repair if needed in the process

 

Demising is also possible but might take more attempts as you might miss shots.

All true offcourse.

But ... perhaps it would be advisable to not advise new players to use huggingmechanics to defeat an ai-opponent? Isn't the point of the exercise to show what you can do while sailing, and not to show you what you can do while exploiting ai-weaknesses? (in PVE we offcourse always exploit the ai, but newer players will probably not know yet how to do that? (and perhaps shouldn't know about it too soon?))

Hugging ai can hardly be called a skill ... and it will get you/me (a new or inexperienced) killed against an experienced player.

I didn't need to hug any of those ships to sink them (beat the first exam the first try and the second one on the second try (i was too aggressive the first time): chain one ship down, separate and drag the other one with me, destroy it, then went back for the second (the 'chained one') and graped and boarded it (no ram, just waited for it to make a tack (another abusing of predictable ai-movement)).

Many new players, though, think that they should be able to finish the exam after they have done the tutorial. Perhaps a message could be given (in the tutorial) that the exams are hard (even for some veteran players apparently) and that getting more experience in OW (capping some tradeships, capping/sinking a few warships (missions or just free roaming)) is advisable before moving on and trying to complete the exams.  (Obviously the whole tutorial needs some more work to make more sense to a new player)

[neoblackheart]

I have 300 Hours on the game but its from back before march of last year. I don't know what has changed.

though I don't know what hugging is.

Edited January 22, 2019 by neoblackheart

[Lightfoot]

Has anyone successfully used these two methods since the last update?

Why I ask is that I noticed the AI's responses are much more intelligent than the ones I see in the videos.  Especially on the Boarding one.  The videos look so predictable.  Player does Attack in first few seconds, AI always responds with Defend, Player switches to Deck Guns around 2 seconds before end.  Player wins round.  Player repeats and the AI never changes it responses.  What I have observed is the AI now will switch to Brace 2 seconds before round end.  AI will often use Attack.  It appears the developers have upgraded the AI a bit.  The Boarding game is basically Rock, Paper, Scissors.  Unless the programmer puts in actual flaws in the AI the player should never win such a simple game for a computer.

[Vidar]

So far i haven't passed guess i'm trash most succesfull method i've used is the hugging thing i sunk 1 of but then i got boarded by the other and completely annihilated by the other ship. Seems wierd that exploiting the AI is the way to go half the time the ship i hugged didn't fire at me because guess hugging?